Piper Jaffray wireless hardware analyst T. Michael Walkley has released a new research report on Palm and the potential impact of the coming of the iPhone. Walkley says Palm will be the hardest hit by the iPhone and reports on claims that the continued introduction of new Blackberry devices will further hurt sales.

"With the BlackBerry Curve ramping and iPhone launching June 29th at AT&T, we view Treo as the most impacted by these launches and anticipate even further declines in sell through trends." He says clerks at AT&T stores had already reported “frustration” in trying to sell Palm’s "750" series of Treo phones. Moreover, the upcoming introduction of a new model of BlackBerry, the 8830, at Sprint stores, will hurt sales of Palm’s recently introduced Treo 755p model.

Impulse Buy?

>He says clerks at AT&T stores had already reported “frustration” in trying to sell Palm’s "750" series of Treo phones.

I'm interested in knowing how many smartphone sales are decided on by the clerk at the store.

I would think that most people who are really in the market for a smart phone (really need the functions -email etc, not going for style or flash) will have made a decision based on experience seeing them work in the real world (i.e. the people they work with owning them, or their own experience).

When I bought my 650 I knew everything I needed to know already. Sure I checked it out in a store to make sure that the keyboard was ok for me. But I'd been a Palm user since 1997 and I'd owned a GSM Blackberry (the B/W screen, Blue one from AT&T).

There is no question that the Treo's seem to be falling behind the curve when it comes to other devices. The info I've been seeing is that the iPhone is going to be desired by many people for style and music reasons. However unless we're all really wrong, the iPhone isn't going to replace a BlackBerry or Treo for someone who really needs one of those devices.

So the question is, for all those people who don't really need a business device (serious email etc) which other smart phone is going to loose sales to the iPhone.

RE: Impulse Buy?

I'd say that most people who buy smart phone type devices do so after a considerable amount of research. Some people may buy a Palm simply because it's a Palm, but on the whole, I believe many people buy these type of devices based upon their individual needs, and which product they feel best handles them.

So to make general, sweeping remarks about "this device being the most impacted" really is not something I think people should do. People will buy what they feel is the best device, no matter who makes it; Palm, Apple, HP, etc...

IMHO.

All good things...

RE: Impulse Buy?

The trap Palm has gone into is that they are aiming only at the so called business segment. This is something the large ones like Nokia, SE, Samsung, Motorola - well - everybody else except RIM has deliberately chosen not to do. They only include a handfull of phones in that segment compared to several dozens in other segments.

I think the business segment with regard to gadgets is something that only exist in the US. There may be many reasons for this, but I think the main reason is the Americans urge to be uniform, and particularly within the business segment. In Europe a phone is something you change every 6 months so you look good. Anyway, it is a small niche, in global spec it is miniscule, but most importantly it is a niche that is *not* the technology leader, it is not even technology driven, and certainly not something to associate yourself with if you are going to be hip, cool, or even stylish and classy. It is impossible to walk around with a Bleckberry or Treo and at the same time be classy and stylish, or even geeky (then you go for HTC or a Linux phone if you can get one, or simply an N95).

Having looked at the iPhone more closely I find it both classy and stylish, maybe to the point of being boring, boring in the "Desperate-Housewives"-kind of way, if you know what I mean. It is definitely not geeky or hip or cool, although the technology is cool. It is THE perfect toy for grown up girls (women, housewifes in particular), and will therefore sell alot, in the US at least. I don't think it will sell much elsewhere, the specs are just too low at the moment (2 MP camera, no 3G etc). When it finally comes to Europe it will be old news as well as being even more outdated technologically. Besides, watching movies on a small gadget is just too geeky (or plain childish) to be classy, yet the device itself is too classy to be geeky, so for all practical purposes it will be a walkman phone and has to compete with SE who comes with a new and classi*er* walkman phone several times a year (SE need some competition here, but the iPhone is not it, not even close at the moment). I have to admit that the iPhone seems to redefine ease of use in a phone, which is THE weak spot on all Nokia phones, and in this respect it pushes the technology several notches compared with any other phone. So, the iPhone clearly is the leader in ease of use as well as being both classy and stylish. In some ways it is a technology leader, and it has to be because it is heading for a technology driven market segment, the main segment, the largest segment. Point is: if Apple chooses to go for the American business segment sometime in the near future, they will totally wipe out both RIM and Palm. Chances are that the iPhone even with today's specs will be good *enough* for the American business segment (and if the boss has one, the rest will follow ...)

The Foleo, which I think is an extremely good idea and concept in general, is also aimed at that miniscule market segment. I just can't for the best of me understand why Palm has chosen that path - again. By increasing the specs just enough to use YouTube, the market suddenly widends several thousand times.

Regarding impulse buy I think it is more like this: In every price segment people tend to expect the same specs, and this is in most respect true. Sure there are some differences, but they are tiny, it is more a matter of this phone having 3.2 MP camera while that phone have 2 MP camera, but included 1 GB SD card and so on. What is left is design, looks, feel, size, sound.

RE: Impulse Buy? better count your apps and your taps

With the iPhone still NOT allowing 3rd party software (except through the web browser), there are so many things the iPhone can not do when compared to the Palm, unless the iPhone is connected to the internet.

It is at least a two step process for EACH EMAIL message you want to delete: slide your finger to the right over the message and then tap the "Delete" button that appears.

On the Palm, it is a one step process for each email where you place a check mark next to it in the list view and then you select Delete from the menu at the very end. Furthermore on the Palm, if you know that you get more junk email than real email, you can tap "Select All" from the Message menu (which places a check mark next to each email message) and then only uncheck those email messages you want to keep.

So if you received 100 new email messages on your Palm and 90% of them are spam, then all you have to do is tap less than 20 times to keep the email you are interested in:Tap 1: menuTap 2: Select AllTaps 3 to 12: Uncheck the 10 emails you want to keepTap 13: menuTap 14: DeleteTap 15: BothTap 16: menuTap 17: Empty TrashTap 18: OK

From what is shown about the iPhone in its Guided Tour so far, you would have to slide and tap your finger over 180 times!!! That is 10 TIMES MORE WORK (180/18).

I also wonder how easy the iPhone will be to scroll a web page or email message list EXACTLY one screenful at a time. The Palm has the dedicated 5-way navigation hardware button for this while on the iPhone you have to slide your finger, which may cause you to scroll further or not as far as you wanted to. It does not look as exact as dedicated Page Up and Page Down hardware buttons.

The iPhone does have a much nicer web browser, music and video player, and photo viewer than the Palm. And Apple is marketing the iPhone way better than Palm has ever marketed any of their devices!!!

RE: Treo 750

Uhhh, I'll take a stab here and guess that you have never had to support yourself / family on a paycheck from sales. The only people with that kind of motivation are the bean counters. The sales guys are usually motivated to move anything and everything that puts commish in their pocket, including the furniture if necessary.

I would be more inclined to say "his goal is to blow smoke near certain orifices so that the customer feels great about their purchase, thus cherishing their product, thus having a + experience, thus returning at the end of contract, thus generating more commish." Or who knows, maybe he was just being honest. :-o

Pat Horne

RE: Treo 750

"Your response shows how one sided your mind is, the salesperson was a she/her."

No, that does not show how one-sided anyone's mind is. He/his, etc..., is gramatically correct, as that was gender-neutral. That is how English USED to be before everyone became 'politically correct', and is always trying not to offend anyone. In short, stay on topic, and get a life.

All good things...

Unless, of course and as noted elsewhere here ,...

Positive Impact on Palm

The i-phone will sell to those who bought i-pods. Looks cool, easy to work, doesn't do much. Its not on a 3G network so be patient.The Blackberry's are the business user's e-mail device of choice. Problem is that while you can open office document attachments, you can't edit them and e-mail them out.The Palm does it all with excellent third party software. E-mail, check. Open attached office documents, check. Edit office documents and e-mail them out, check. Get information on the web, check. MP-3 and video player, check. Tons of games, check. The i-phone has forced Verizon to allow wi-fi capability for its phones. Palm will add wi-fi and will continue to appeal to the power user that really wants a handheld computer.I also find it interesting that the widely acclaimed i-phone OS appears from the photos to be just a better looking version of Palm OS. Proving that the windows based approach is not very mobile computing friendly.

RE: Positive Impact on Palm

I agree with you. The iPhone is like my girlfriend: hot and sexy, but not intelligent. The blackbery is like my sister: not so sexy as my girlfriend, but she is a little more intelligent. The Treo is like my mother: Her prettiness is her experience.

Are you from the Ozarks?

I agree with you. The iPhone is like my girlfriend: hot and sexy, but not intelligent. The blackbery is like my sister: not so sexy as my girlfriend, but she is a little more intelligent. The Treo is like my mother: Her prettiness is her experience.

Thanks for making me almost throw up my lunch.

I nominate your post for the "Grossest Post of the Year" (GroPOTY) award. You'll probably win.

TVoR

RE: Positive Impact on Palm

The Treo is intelligent, while the iPhone is not? Good lord. The Treo OS is untouched since the 90's, and the hardware is basically untouched since Handspring. Sure they've cobbled together various hacks and mods on top of it, but that's kinda the root of the problem.

Someone mentioned email above. I can't hardly keep more than a few hundred messages on my Treo because the memory is so minimal. Selecting all and deleting, which is as easy as swiping down the check marks on the side, take about a minute of freeze time before completing the task. Welcome to 1998.

No multitasking in the treo. Spend 5 minutes looking for a web page, look at a note, begin looking for web page again. I suppose people enjoy slow torture?

Anyhow, the Treo is a far better phone than the iPhone, for dialing a contact out of a list of 1000 in three seconds, with one hand. Thanks, Handspring! And the treo is great for speacialized information, like medical apps. I don't need that, nor do most people, but some industries do!

Oh yeah, "thousands of applications" that are no longer installed on my Treo due to memory issues or "third party" crashes. It's a selling point.

RE: Positive Impact on Palm

Awww, c'mon. Palm has done plenty with the Treo since buying out Handspring:

1) Shrunk the battery life to about half a day's use.

2) removed that pesky reset hole that had been bothering all of us.

3) Moved to the lesser-standard of MiniSD, and put it on the side where you have to dig it out with a screwdriver.

4) Made the "ringer-off" switch black and the indicator color a dark red so you can no longer tell by quick sight whether your ringer's on or off.

5) Moved the camera nearly to the middle of the phone so you can take better pictures of your index finger.

6) Firmware fix for faulty 700p bluetooth pairing was released only about 365 days after the phone.

7) Two words: "Windows Mobile"

With all these brilliant "improvements" and levels of customer support, it's obvious that Palm is in it for the long run. They'll eat Apple's lunch - I mean WTF does Apple know about designing and supporting and improving portable devices and OS's anyhow? No, it's Palm with their winning culture of churning existing customers, ignoring blatent problems with their devices, under-spec'ing and overpromising that will win in the long run. I don't know how many times I've cursed my iPod for continuing to work reliably these past few years, exactly as Apple had advertised. The one time it didn't I walked into an Apple Store and they swapped it right there for a working replacement without an argument - I even got a smile. B@$tards!!

Thank heavens Palm has the reputation and experience to trounce Apple in this field. Jobs will have to stay at Disney full time sweeping floors!

RE: Positive Impact on Palm

I don't get this. The Windows Treo 750W is probably the only Palm device that is still selling outside the US together with the Tungsten TX, (except maybe in the UK where one or two 680s are sold). All reviews you can find on 750W clearly show that this is one of the best smartphones ever created.

RE: Positive Impact on Palm

benway88:Someone mentioned email above. I can't hardly keep more than a few hundred messages on my Treo because the memory is so minimal. Selecting all and deleting, which is as easy as swiping down the check marks on the side, take about a minute of freeze time before completing the task. Welcome to 1998.

Just out of curiosity, why on earth would you want to keep hundreds of emails on your handheld? I'm not making excuses for Palm - by now, they should have come up with some way to compress your email archive onto your SD card - but it sounds, erm, excessive.

No multitasking in the treo. Spend 5 minutes looking for a web page, look at a note, begin looking for web page again. I suppose people enjoy slow torture?

Eh? The 650 was bad at this, because it didn't cache web pages, but from the 700p onwards it's simple.

RE: Positive Impact on Palm

JAJAJAJAJA..!!! Come on guys..!!! My last post was a joke. I know the Treo should be a better device. Whatever.. I think we can't compare the iPhone and the Treo because they are aimed to diferent kind of users. The iPhone should be compared to rich-multimedia enabled devices from SonyEricsson or Nokia. The Treo is a bussines-oriented device like the Blackberry.

Treo and iPhone are aimed at different markets...

Treo competition comes from BlackBerry. I aligned partially to the dark side by now owning a Pearl phone, altough I still use my TX for daily planner and eReader (and the occasional game).

Apple will have to learn that the life-cycles of MP3 players and cellphones are very different. People expect the MP3 to last for some years until the unit fails, but the phone is different, people change it a lot more frequently, at least once every year. You don't wait for the phone to fail, you change it when you renew your plan.

I will switch from Treo to iPhone soon...

Palm completely missed out on the internet-features of a smartphone. The antiquated OS simply cannot handle it. And while you tout the abundance of third-party apps available for the Palm - just gibe the iPhone some time and people will come up with amazing Web 2.0-based apps to fill this apparent gap.

Palm's answer to the current challenges is the Faileo. Give me a break!

RE: I will switch from Treo to iPhone soon...

just gibe the iPhone some time and people will come up with amazing Web 2.0-based apps to fill this apparent gap.

Bzzzzt! Sorry, that wasn't the answer we were looking for. But please take home a complimentary PIC board game...

To steal a quote from David Beers' blog (http://pikesoft.com/blog/), Web 2.0 apps will never, ever be able to replace native OS apps. A web application means:

No access to any device features except for dialing the phone (something you've been able to do from some of the first mobile phone browsers ever developed). Not the camera, not the microphone, not the accelerometer, not the proximity detection, not the multitouch events, really not the touchscreen at all except as mediated by HTML events. So basically no direct access to any form of user input. Not much output, either, unless you're posting character data to a server: no Bluetooth radio transmissions, no display or sharing of captured video, images or sounds, no 3D or even 2D graphics APIs. I guess we could play AJAX Sudoku games created with HTML table tags.

RE: I will switch from Treo to iPhone soon...

> ...Palm should have spent its R&D on improving the Treos> rather than coming out with some crippled Linux laptop...

Though I've been a PALM-pessimist for quite some time ("TREO will not save PALM" (*)), in general I haven't had too much to say about PALM management's execution with what they have in the environment in which PALM competes.

That is, PALM's decision to "try another sector" makes absolutely total sense to me - when the Big Guys get interested in the sector in which you have one product, it's time to get outta town!

Granted - I was totally shocked (and floored!) by the Fooleo - I expected WAY more than that (I have to admit I bought into the crap that PALM was oozing with software/hardware geniuses - now we know - hey! - they're like any other company out there!). To give PALM the "benefit" of the doubt, though, maybe someone said:

== "We gotta show SOMETHING at D!"

so they did, ready or not.

But, IMHO, they HAD to get away from the TREOs because they simply cannot compete with companies like Nokia that spit out a new phone every 9 days (on average):

== "...And we have the COUNTER-evidence of PALM's failing position== in literally all-things-PALM!==== That is, they MUST come up with something different and better.==== TREO will not save PALM.==== Maybe something different and better will.==== Stay tuned!"

RE: been a week now...

RE: been a week now...

btw, would nt it be ironic if that after all this time I finally decide to buy a Treo and NOW the TReo dies because of the new BlackBerries and iPhone.

I'm in the same boat - my 680 arrives in next couple of days and I too cringed at the implications of this article's title. I draw solace in the fact that I dropped (& totally immersed) my T3 in a water filled gutter tonight - I took it as a sign from above that my decision to buy a Treo was timely. (BTW I think the T3 will dry up and live to fight another day - At last I discovered the purpose of those loose screws on the slider!)

might switch in a year or two...

My company-paid dumbphone is on AT&T and has a year+ to go on its contract. When it's up, the iPhone would be an great option for replacement for it and my Palm TX of 1 1/2 years. I don't use any smartphone (or hardly any dumbphone) features and don't own an iPod (yet), so a consumer-class convergence device fits me just fine. The fewer chargers we have at home/car/office, the better!

The Palm medical software which I refer to daily has been very useful, but most can be replicated on the web. You could argue that it's a better deal for web developers, as they don't have to learn PalmOS or WinCE, they just have to resize their pages for 320x480 as some sample pages out there already have. ePocrates, the frequently used drug database, is already on the web, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's a small-screen option shortly.

RE: Palm Will Destroy Apple

That is EXACTLY what I did when I looked at the list of Subjects at the bottom of PIC's home page and saw yours.

Have to admit it made me open a tab containing your message, however - very effective!

Lol!

=========

WAITAMINUTE!!! - I just realized my standard way of reading PIC comments is to go to the bottom of the PIC home page (itself one of N open tabs on my browser du jour - firefox or ie) and open each apparently-distinct-thread comment in its own tab.

RE: Palm Will Destroy Apple

do I =really= want some remote website to record/know that I religiously click on EVERY SINGLE ONE of your posts?

Actually, from a quick look at the page source it looks like all the navigation code is in client-side script, so the only servers that know about your embarrassing browsing habits are the ones that you're actually browsing to.

Ah. Except that I can see Google Analytics knows you've been there. As it knows you've been practically everywhere on the web these days.

If you're looking for a browser where no remote server ever knows about an HTTP request from you, just let me know because that would take about 10 minutes to develop. It'll have an address bar and a pretty green "Go" button, and every time you tap "Go" it will pop up an attractively formatted message that says "No web pages for you, Privacy Boy!"

RE: Palm Will Destroy Apple

RE: Palm Will Destroy Apple

It's an easy way for people to see the traffic on their site. I believe you get a control panel that shows you reports of the number of page views, unique visitors, etc. It's similar to software you usually get when you open a hosting account.

Actually, I can see I was mistaken when I suggested that Google Analytics would be able to tell which sites you browsed to within WiiTabs: it would only be able to record that you landed on WiiTabs since all the browsing you do once you get there looks to be private to you and the site you're browsing to.

RE: Palm Will Destroy Apple

"A script in this movie is causing Adobe Flash Player 9 to run slowly. If it continues to run, your computer may become unresponsive. Do you want to abort the script?"

W T F???

WiiTabs... Mmmmmmmm... WiiTabs

Thanks, but no thanks.

How about instead Palm gives us a fcuking browser with REAL tabs instead of Palm employee Ben Combee suggesting users try ridiculous KLUDGES like WiiTabs? I can't believe Palm would have the gall (balls?) to ship a $600 laptop in 2007 that doesn't even support tabbed browsing or multiple windows.

80Gb iPhone?

RE: 80Gb iPhone?

Man, I have a LifeDrive/Flash now. With a 1GB SD card, I can carry about 5GBs. Do you know that I have a really hard time *filling* that? Some people wouldn't. But I don't want to carry EVERYthing, just the stuff I really WANT.

Maybe I'd feel different if I had 80GB of memory...

Anyway, this by way of pointing out that the 8GB on the higher-end iPhone seems like a lot to me. (Well, I don't know how much H.264 video will eat vs DiVX AVIs...)

RE: 80Gb iPhone?

I think most people are familiar with "Clarke's Law": "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." At Apple, we had a sort of corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo."

They were almost certainly using an 80 gig iPod to mock up this display, I'd say.

iPhone = The End of Palm

It's simple people, the iPhone will end Palm once and for all. It's been coming for some time now - its just taking someone like Apple to make it happen.

Just take notice that Palm hasn't changed its hardware format in ages (with the exception of chopping off the Treo's antenna, hasn't modernized a very dated OS, but has instead adopted Windows Mobile, another marginal OS, and can't seem to get updates out in a timely manner (went they do anymore, they don't work properly. And lets not forget the indications of Palm's new products - disappointing at best.

This is a company in trouble and lets face it, the iPhone has the kind of innovations that Palm should have produced. They haven't and that is going to spell the demise of the company. Period.

RE: iPhone = The End of Palm

I can't tell if you're serious or sarcastic, but for the record, I'm a lot less optimistic about that now that we know there will be no third party application development for the iPhone. However Foleo synchronization works it's going to have to connect in some way to data that is on the phone. That might be by communicating with the native application that "owns" that data or by hooking into the database from some other installed software, neither of which sound like anything that anyone but Apple itself will be able to implement unless they open the iPhone up a lot more than they say they're going to do.

RE: iPhone = The End of Palm

I really very very slightly expect PALM to announce such a thing by/on Friday.

Had I still possessed even a modicum of extra respect (*) for PALM's software/hardware guys - something I lost finally and completely with the intro of the Fooleo - I would more than very very slighty expect it.

That is, I think in reality PALM's gonna completely miss a fantastic opportunity to make a big(ger) splash with the Fooleo.

But, hey!, it's fun to speculate!

-----------

(*) As noted somewhere else at least once - I forget where but either here or Yahoo - I had, for no actually good reason, swallowed the line that PALM was afloat with software/hardware geniuses. Now that the empirical evidence is overwhelming that such a view is DUHmb to the point of STOOPID, that EXTRA respect is gone

RE: iPhone = The End of Palm

I had, for no actually good reason, swallowed the line that PALM was afloat with software/hardware geniuses. Now that the empirical evidence is overwhelming that such a view is DUHmb to the point of STOOPID, that EXTRA respect is gone

Ever heard of the "mythical man-month?" Most good software (that is delivered on time) is created by small groups of talented people, not organizations that are "afloat with engineers." The problem is the communication overhead of a large team, which increases geometrically with the size of the team.

You could develop more products in parallel with a bigger company, assuming they do not have a lot of dependencies on each other. (Nokia seems to manage this, for example.) I suspect that Palm tries to keep the teams who are doing product development pretty small.

Size Matters

I myself will be ditching my 650 for a Blackberry Pearl as soon as it comes out for Verizon. Because, as we all know, size matters. And in the cell phone industry smaller is better (case and point: razr)

First Review ... 'DON'T GET 'HUNG UP' ON BUYING AN iPhone'

NYPost Editor is highly underwhelmed by this very expensive phone. He says don't buy it. I'm sure Apple will be rushing him iPhone 2.0 test units for another pre-release smackdown. Twisted Evil

Here's some quotes ..."TENS of thousands of people are expected to line up this Friday for the most hyped gadget of the decade - the iPhone.Don't be one of them."

"Tech geeks and some business travelers will wait in line Friday (or pay someone else). You should wait for the next version."

Obviously NOTHING could match the hype this thing has received. That being said, his review was what I expected would occur. The iPhone is high on flair, but not robust enough in "smartphone" maturity to really be a true competitor to biz oriented Treos, HTCs, and BBs.

I expect that this will be an "iPod Phone" more than it will be an iPhone. Apple is not really head to head here with Nokia e61s, HTCs, BB8830s, or Treo 755s. They are bringing in a new segment that is more like a musclebound "Chocolate" phone. Future Treos could certainly benefit from much of the tech. Can you say HVGA? I and many others have for 4 years now! How bout WiFi? Nuff said.

Anyway, the iPhone will have a certain impact on the traditional smartphone segment, but it's apples and oranges folks. Any power user who dumps their Treo 680 for this $600 beast will probably be back pretty quick, unless they are primarily multimedia users.

For all the slamming we've been giving Palm over the lack of innovation and specs, they have actually done a pretty good job of building a smartfone that is robust in a lot of ways. That takes a lot of time, learning, and resources. Collagen caught a lot of heat for his "Apple's not just gonna walk in" comment. In light of Palm's international carrier agreements, and robust business apps etc, I would say he was pretty close to right. Cool

RE: First Review ... 'DON'T GET 'HUNG UP' ON BUYING AN iPhone'

For all the slamming we've been giving Palm over the lack of innovation and specs, they have actually done a pretty good job of building a smartfone that is robust in a lot of ways. That takes a lot of time, learning, and resources. Collagen caught a lot of heat for his "Apple's not just gonna walk in" comment. In light of Palm's international carrier agreements, and robust business apps etc, I would say he was pretty close to right.

RE: Mossberg and Pogue iPhone Reviews Are Up

Wow. I was expecting much worse battery performance than those reviews have stated. Well done, Apple!

However, there is a sting in the tail. From Pogue's review:

Apple says that the battery starts to lose capacity after 300 or 400 charges. Eventually, you’ll have to send the phone to Apple for battery replacement, much as you do now with an iPod, for a fee.

Since it'll need recharging every day (or let's be generous and say every other day), that means your battery will start to crap out after about a year and a half, at which point you'll need to send your phone away to Apple and pay them to replace it. Sending away an iPod isn't such a big deal, but sending away your phone? That'll suck.

No MMS? No camcorder? For such an advanced device, these basics are odd omissions.

In short: not many surprises. The software keyboard, as predicted, doesn't match up to the physical keys of a Treo or Blackberry, althought Mossberg seems to have gotten along fine with it, and the glossy interface is fun to use but requires extra, unnecessary taps to get things done, due to the lack of physical buttons. (Amusingly, you have to switch to the iPod app in order to control music playback, although you can use the earbud mic button for play/pause and next track. For a device that's so media-focussed, this seems Dumb. Even a Treo with pTunes can do this without switching apps... but then, a Treo has buttons.)

Will it kill Palm? I doubt it. But as I said in my editorial all those eons ago, unless Palm pull their finger out and give us some more varied hardware designs, and wifi, they're going to find themselves in a dilly of a pickle.

TimI apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.Treo 270 ---> Treo 650 ---> Crimson Treo 680

Watch the iPhone guided tour, then try to defend Palm

I dare any Palm loyalist to watch that and defend Palm -- and I've been one of those big palm loyalists for a long time.

I don't care if there isn't an SDK for developers yet - it does more of what I want out of my palm better than I can do with my hundreds of 3rd party software programs and hacks. Cost out a Treo with all the 3rd party software you need to compensate for sucky internal apps and compare that to the iPhone cost.

Palm: Good luck with the Folio and your treo-mashups. Apple appears to have provided the follow-on PDA to the T3 that you've never been able to produce. Oh, and it's a phone too.

Maybe once I get my iPhone, I'll try to swap out the hard drive for a 4GB CF card in my LAGdrive and use it for ... ? Hmm... I really can't think of what I'd use it for if I had an iPhone. Sucky browser? Crashing OS? running AddIt? Adobe acrobat reader on Palm? *not* multitasking? Running apps that can't support 320X480? Running apps that can't support NVFS? Moving files awkwardly around between internal and external storage to manage space? Running apps that can't deal with TWO "cards" (drive + sd card slot)? Rebooting? Replacing all the native apps with better 3rd party apps? Fixing OS bugs by registering all of DmitryGr's apps? Waiting for OS fixes from Palm that never come?

The most ironic thing is that recently people see my DEATHdrive and ask me if it's an iPhone. Imagine one of the worst devices ever released by Palm being mistaken for one of the most hyped, most desired, most buzz-creating devices around! Ha!

RE: R.I.P.

If you want to get nit picky about it, you can trace the origins of Palm to the birth of Hawkins, circa 1950's. My point is the iPhone is what Palm should been. They are not serious about creativity, they don't care until a handheld device i.e. the iPhone which is lighyears beyond Palm's designs. I have used Palm devices for years and could never figure out why people demanded the so called "paper white" backgrounds, One of the Iphone's cool features is the gui that incorporates a black background and if you say this is a non issue then tell me why people are camping for this cell phone. After using Palm device for 10 + years, I will jump ship as soon as I can get and iPhone. R.I.P. Palm.

RE: Goodness Gracious, Great Balls of Fire!

Thought 2: Results are from an online panel, implying a more tech-savvy respondent than other kinds of surveys might attract. (Of course, I have no idea of Lightspeed's methodology. Just saying...) This kind of person will naturally like the idea of a slick gadget like the iPhone.

Thought 3: One in three Americans would have trouble finding their ass with both hands, let alone operating an iPhone.

Thought 4: Reading Lightspeed's press release, only 50% of respondents (and that's the young, hip ones) had ever actually seen an iPhone. Who's to say they won't change their minds once they do? (or once they see the price tag...)

Anyhoo, I'm not really denigrating anything, I'm just a big believer in the old "lies, damn lies and statistics" maxim. I've no doubt iPhone will be a hit. It's been marketed too well not to be. I just don't think it will be quite as huge as people are expecting.

RE: Goodness Gracious, Great Balls of Fire!

RE: Goodness Gracious, Great Balls of Fire!

Thought 2: Results are from an online panel, implying a more tech-savvy respondent than other kinds of surveys might attract. (Of course, I have no idea of Lightspeed's methodology. Just saying...) This kind of person will naturally like the idea of a slick gadget like the iPhone.

Without spending too much time on it, I tried to figure out how they got their "sample". They (of course) make plenty of claims about their methodology, but without full transparency, it's pretty hard to know just how far their results can be generalized (the the population as a whole). We already know that they are only surveying people who are "online", so that is already one strike against them.

If somehow they are in the business of making money from their surveys, then I'd be more cautious of their methodology.

RE: Goodness Gracious, Great Balls of Fire!

Sweeping, derogatory statements about Americans from someone who's whined about the comments made about him and his own nation is just as good as peeing in the flakes.

You've forgotten where PIC is hosted, who runs the site and where most of the readership is based.You've forgotten that it's those Americans which you call dumb which have worked hard to provide you with that Treo you so love in addition most of the operating systems and cars which you use in that nation of 20 million called Australia.

RE: Goodness Gracious, Great Balls of Fire!

I've forgotten nothing, my friend. America is the country that invented Jerry Springer. I think many of the citizens of that fine nation would agree that a lot of their fellow Americans are dumbasses. (Heck, humour sites like the Onion make a living out of it.)

I'd love to see a link to my "whining". From what I recall, TVoR had a (pretty funny) rant about Oz in that iPhone thread which I basically let through to the keeper.

Anyhoo, I suggest you look up "joke" in the dictionary sometime. Seriously, dude...

RE: Goodness Gracious, Great Balls of Fire!

By the way, even at $600, the iPhone is far more within the reach of Americans than that Ferrari, beach house or butler. In fact Palm until very recently has been selling most of its Treos at that price point to Americans.

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